The spy photographers we work with are fairly adept at figuring out what it is, exactly, they happen to be taking a picture of that day. So, when the shooters send notes along with their images, we don't often quibble too much with the conclusions that they've drawn.

Case in point is this new set of spied photographs, depicting what would appear to be a variant of the Range Rover Evoque. Our man on the ground tells us that, tipped off by the slightly disfigured area around the fuel filler and the misshapen wheel arches, the larger-than-normal Evoques seen here are actually test mules for the next iteration of the Land Rover LR2. With the development still in the very early stages, the new LR2 (known elsewhere as the Freelander) may not be ready for primetime until sometime in 2015.

That all certainly makes sense from the perspective of the current Land Rover/Range Rover lineup, still we can't help but at least wonder if there's a chance that what we're seeing is the embodiment of the rumored long-wheelbase Evoque? Smart money may still be on the revised LR2, but we'll keep watching to see what these testers really turn into.

The differentiation between Jaguar and its sister company Land Rover used to be fairly clear: Jaguar makes cars, and Land Rover makes SUVs. But that line is about to get a little blurred.

Apparently no longer content to let Land Rover have all the high-riding fun, Jaguar is preparing to launch a crossover over its own, based on a new lightweight aluminum platform and previewed by the C-X17 concept (pictured below) that was unveiled just last month in Frankfurt. But the latest reports suggest that Land Rover could, in turn, spin its own crossover off the new Jaguar architecture.

That new crossover, according to analysis published by Bernstein Research and reported by Autocar, could be the long-rumored Evoque XL. Alternatively referred to as the Grand Evoque, the new model was expected to arrive more or less simply as a stretched version of the existing Evoque (pictured above), but is now tipped to be based instead on the new Jaguar platform.

The project – codenamed L560 – would be both larger and more expensive than the production C-X17, and bridge the gap between the Evoque and the Range Rover Sport. Projected to out-sell the other three models in the Range Rover family, the larger Evoque (or whatever JLR ends up calling it) is tipped to arrive in 2016, so watch this space for more on this development.